Last night I dreamt that my lover died. I was amazed by the news. At first I didn’t weep. I wept when I had the thought that he could no longer speak his own name.

What a relief to wake up. In real life I head home in the late afternoon. I am turning toward Ventura from a side street. It is very hot and the light is papaya-colored. Above and beyond Ventura there are slanted hills, real laundry-piles of hills, green and white. Houses on the hills’ angles, facing various directions like kids on round sleds, rotating as they descend by the weird laws of snow, which is not solid or liquid (snow is a little like sweating skin). The houses are white like soft animals’ bellies, and fish-pink, and fish-orange, in the light and because they are as usual stucco.

On Ventura beneath them there is a long white sign above a storefront. The shop sells lamps. Cursive lettering, “Mi Casa”, and at either end a little faded posey of roses. Lamps are not on yet. Stalks of palms.